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Artists

Backwater

Ian Corfe-Stephens is an illustrator, graphic designer and printmaker whose woodcuts have featured in several issues of Slightly Foxed. Ian has been engraving since 1961 mainly concentrating on fine art prints of his home territory of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire. ‘My…

Cover Artist: Issue 61, Faith Chevannes, ‘Fox & Sheep, Tamar Valley’

Cover Artist: Issue 61, Faith Chevannes, ‘Fox & Sheep, Tamar Valley’

Faith Chevannes is from the Tamar valley on the Devon and Cornwall border. Her drypoint prints and mixed media pieces are inspired by the spectacular landscape around her and reflect its ever-changing seasons, its wildlife and its ancient farming cycles.

Decoration for ‘The London Bookbinders’ (1950)

Decoration for ‘The London Bookbinders’ (1950)

In Issue 60 Alan Bradley explored ‘literary criticism, character sketches and the byways of reading’ in Virginia Woolf’s The Common Reader. His article was illustrated with this fine bookish fellow by Gwen Raverat, which was originally produced as a decoration…

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 60, Chris Wormell, ‘The Fox’

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 60, Chris Wormell, ‘The Fox’

Chris Wormell never went to art college or had any formal training and is entirely self-taught. Nevertheless, he has become one of the finest illustrators working in Britain today. His illustrations, predominantly wood engravings or linocuts, are timeless, beautiful and inspiring.

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 59, Luna North, ‘Beechnuts’

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 59, Luna North, ‘Beechnuts’

Luna North trained at the Falmouth School of Art. She now lives in Devon where she specializes in printmaking. The images in her linocuts of native flora and fauna are inspired by the wild landscape around her and are designed and carved in the Romantic tradition. Her work can be seen in galleries throughout the UK and has recently been exhibited in New York.

Legends of the Grail

Legends of the Grail

‘Some people are snooty about illustrating grown-up fiction, vapouring on about how their imaginations will generate all the images they need. The riposte to that is Dickens and Phiz, Surtees and Leech, Sherlock Holmes and Sidney Paget. In the past The Folio Society has added to this roll of honour with such achievements as Joan Hassall’s wood engravings for Jane Austen, Simon Brett’s for a gamut running from Keats and Shelley to Legends of the Grail, Charles Keeping’s drawings for the 16-volume Dickens, Edward Bawden’s linocuts for Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. Folio threw a lifeline to illustrators as work for advertisers and magazines began to dry up from the 1950s, and it continues to be the one firm regularly commissioning pictures for something other than children’s books.’

Winter Garden

Miriam Macgregor’s seasonal wood engraving decorated the contents page of Issue 36 of Slightly Foxed, Winter 2012.

Thomas Hardy’s Study At Max Gate

Thomas Hardy’s Study At Max Gate

Howard Phipps studied painting and printmaking at The Gloucestershire College of Art. He is now based near Salisbury and is probably best known for his drawings and engravings of the chalk downs of Wiltshire and Dorset.

Nettlecombe: Garden in October

Nettlecombe: Garden in October

‘As the Second World War draws to a close, a group of six friends pool resources in order to rent a sizeable House in the Country – capital H, capital C. Their list of requirements is exacting. It has to be ‘one of those houses that’s been built bit by bit, for hundreds of years’. It has to have acres of land and dozens of outhouses. As it turns out, such a house does exist, a pretty, rambling but rather rundown Tudor manor house in deepest Kent. And so they move in . . .’

Autumn

‘It’s hard to believe autumn is here already. But the days are shortening, the air is growing brisker, and gradually the city is coming to life again as people trickle back after the long summer break. London is back in business, and it’s all go here in the Slightly Foxed office, with the latest of the Slightly Foxed Editions and Slightly Foxed Cubs arriving from the printers, and some new projects afoot . . .’

A Skein of Wild Geese

A Skein of Wild Geese

‘The essays sparkle with precise details. Whether he’s picking out the order of birdsong at dawn in a Wisconsin wood, following a mink track through the snow in January or tracing the first signs of thaw in spring, the essays are warm, beautiful things. They have some of the aphoristic appeal of Emerson, the wildness of Thoreau, the poetry of Whitman – but it’s the rhythm of them that gets you . . .’

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

‘So “why do I like Miss Austen so very much”, and why do I think Pride and Prejudice perfect? Because it is, quite simply, magical. There is nothing “common-place” about Pride and Prejudice. It has a tightly woven, seductively intricate plot, which unfolds so delicately that the reader falls blindly into the traps of imperception set by the author, alongside that most perfect of imperfect heroines, Elizabeth Bennet . . .’

Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Solstice Lunar Eclipse

We’ve celebrated the art of wood engraving from the very first issue of Slightly Foxed, using these richly detailed illustrations to decorate our articles. In Issue 43 we began an occasional series of standalone features on some of our favourite engravers, and Kathleen Lindsley was the first. This beautiful engraving of a lunar eclipse seemed to be . . .

Wood Engraving, Peregrine

Wood Engraving, Peregrine

‘I was simply searching for the best writing on birds when I came across J. A. Baker’s The Peregrine (1967) – a book that isn’t so much the ‘best’ as the only writing of its kind on the subject . . . ’ Annabel Walker introduced us to J.A. Baker, his book and its powerful subject in issue 45 of Slightly Foxed. Her article was illustrated by this wood engraving by C. F. Tunnicliffe.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

In Issue 58 of Slightly Foxed, Richard Platt reintroduced us to Henry Thoreau, his tragic tale of loss and his literary road to recovery. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers was written after Henry fled to the woods to work the land and build a cabin, running away from grief and depression that followed the death of his brother. This decoration by Clare Leighton appeared on the cover of the American edition of his book.

Cooling off – Dunvegan

Cooling off – Dunvegan

‘Reading Haldane has transformed the way I understand the Highlands. He taught me how to follow on foot the routes of the drove roads, and to look for the patches of open ground that would have been the “stances” of the drovers: the resting-places, close to water and on level ground, where the men could sleep and the livestock could graze. And he introduced me to the drovers themselves: these hard men, the long-distance lorry-drivers of their day, accustomed to the boredoms and rigours of their journeys, and equipped with internalized sat-navs of astonishing accuracy. They navigated not from maps but from memories, stories and gossip . . .’

‘Thanks for all this grace and beauty . . .

. . . Thank you for the beauty of your website and the quarterly magazine. It’s a real pleasure to read and discover authors, admire the unique editions and fine drawings. Also, I appreciate all your attention, your delicate packaging. It’s heart-warming to know that somewhere there are some persons who have so much enthusiasm and humanity to share their passion, and contribute to preserving the memory of these talented authors and beautiful land.’

M. Garny-Belabed, Virton, Belgium

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